Three days earlier, Mo Tian had walked into what he believed was a meeting of allies. The Grand Coalition of Magi had requested his presence to discuss the growing threat of the Demon Realm's invasion—or so Ji Hao had told him. His oldest friend, his most trusted companion, had personally delivered the invitation with tears in his eyes, speaking of desperate times requiring desperate measures.
Mo Tian should have known better. His enhanced perception should have sensed the trap the moment he stepped into that moonlit clearing where thirty of the realm's most powerful magi waited in formation. He should have questioned why Ji Hao wouldn't meet his eyes as the first spell struck.
The intense battle lasted six hours. Six hours of Mo Tian fighting against impossible odds, his body accumulating wounds that would have killed lesser beings a dozen times over. But he hadn't gained the title of the strongest Magus for nothing, and was able to push back the forces that were up against him and escape with only a few injuries.
But the worst wound—the one that had truly broken him—was the realization that Ji Hao had orchestrated it all. His dearest friend had sold him to their enemies for nothing more than political favor and the promise of half of Mo Tian's valuables and spells.
He'd escaped that clearing more dead than alive, his defensive wards shattered, his mana reserves nearly depleted so he couldn't cast even a mere teleportation spell. The flight back to his tower had been agony, each beat in the air sending fresh waves of torment through his ruined body and worsening his mana reserves.
By the time he'd reached the Crimson Spire, he'd already begun the forbidden ritual that would transform him into a lich—anything to preserve his power, his knowledge, his burning need for revenge.
But they hadn't given him time. The transformation required seven days uninterrupted. He'd only managed three before they came for him.
Now, as another explosion rocked the tower's foundations, Mo Tian stood at his sanctuary's apex, more corpse than man. His flesh hung in tatters from his skeletal frame, held together by dark magic and sheer spite. The lich transformation had been interrupted, leaving him trapped between life and undeath—powerful enough to resist their assault, but not powerful enough to win.
'BOOM!'
The Crimson Spire trembled as azure flames licked higher up its sides. Mo Tian pressed his skeletal hand against the crystal window, watching through the spider-web cracks as his enemies closed in like vultures sensing carrion. The irony wasn't lost on him—the same tower where he'd tortured and killed countless victims now seemed to serve as his final stage.
Below, he could see them all. The Grand Coalition had brought their full might to bear. Siege magi hurled spell after spell at his defensive barriers while battle-magi held formation in case he attempted to break through their lines. At their head stood the three Archmagi: Ji Hao with his silver staff raised high, Fang Wei in his pristine white robes representing the Royal Court, and Zhu Ming whose golden vestments marked him as the Holy Church's champion.
"Mo Tian!" Ji Hao's voice echoed up from below, amplified by wind magic. His former friend and closest companion for over two centuries. "Surrender now, and we'll grant you a swift death!"
A laugh bubbled up from Mo Tian's throat, bitter and sharp as broken glass. The sound was wrong and unnatural—half-human, half-something else—a consequence of his interrupted transformation.
A swift death? After everything they'd shared? After Ji Hao had personally led him into that ambush three days ago, wearing the face of concern while royal court assassins lurked in the shadows? After two hundred years of friendship, of shared meals and scholarly debates, of standing back-to-back against the light while they embraced the darkness?
"You think... you think I'd beg for mercy from the likes of you?" Mo Tian's voice carried down the tower, each word dripping with contempt that seemed to make the very air grow colder. "From those who smiled at my table while sharpening knives for my back?"
His words struck true. Even from this distance, he could see Ji Hao flinch. Good. Let him remember every kindness Mo Tian had shown him. Every time Mo Tian had saved his worthless life. Every moment of trust that had been weaponized against him.
The magical bombardment intensified in response to his defiance. Azure flames licked at the tower's base while lightning crackled against its wards like hungry serpents. Mo Tian could feel his defensive enchantments failing, layer by layer, like scales being peeled from a dying dragon. The tower groaned under the assault, its ancient stones beginning to crack.
Soon, very soon, they would breach his sanctuary and eventually reach him.
He turned away from the window, his movements jerky and unnatural—another gift from his incomplete transformation. The ritual chamber that had once been his study was a ruin of overturned furniture and scorched walls. Scrolls lay scattered like autumn leaves, their centuries of accumulated knowledge now nothing more than kindling for the fires below.
At the room's center sat his greatest work: the ritual circle he'd spent the last day carving into the floor with his own fingernails after they'd shattered his staff in that first ambush. The geometric patterns were perfect despite the crude tools—each line precisely carved. Each stroke had cost him blood, and the metallic tang still filled his mouth like a copper coin placed on a dead man's tongue.
The circle was a masterpiece of forbidden magic, incorporating elements from a dozen different schools of necromancy, transmutation, and dimensional theory. It had taken him over a century to develop the theoretical framework, and another fifty years to gather the necessary components. The irony was that he'd originally designed it as a safety measure—a way to ensure his research would survive even if his body did not.
His grimoire lay open at the center, its pages fluttering despite the still air. The Forbidden Codex of The Dark Impure World, bound in leather and written in ink made from the blood of one-hundred innocent men. Each page held the inner-workings for a forbidden spell powerful enough to require the mana-pool of an Archmage or higher.
Even possessing such a tome was punishable by soul-death in most civilized nations, but what did punishment matter now? They'd already decided his fate.
The book fell open to the page he needed without conscious direction, as if it too understood the gravity of what was about to occur. The spell matrix drawn there seemed to writhe in the flickering light, its alien markings making mortal eyes water to look upon it directly.
"Master, please reconsider."
The voice made Mo Tian freeze completely, his skeletal fingers halting mere inches from the grimoire. A soothing and sweet female tone that had once brought him comfort during long nights of research, that had read aloud to him when his eyes grew tired from studying ancient texts, that had laughed at his terrible jokes when no one else would.
Xiao Yue.
His most promising apprentice stood in the doorway like a ghost from happier times, her silver hair disheveled and hanging loose around her shoulders instead of bound in its usual elaborate braids. Her midnight-blue robes were torn and tattered, revealing glimpses of pale skin beneath. She looked like she'd fought her way up through the attacking forces, and indeed, he could smell blood on her—though whether it was hers or belonged to those who'd tried to stop her, he couldn't tell.
"Xiao Yue?" Mo Tian's voice cracked like old parchment. Had she... had someone actually come for him? After three days of solitude and the bitter knowledge of betrayal, had at least one person remembered their oaths of loyalty?
Hope—that most dangerous of emotions—flickered in his chest like a dying candle.
Her violet eyes met his across the ruined chamber, and for a moment he saw the girl he'd taken as his apprentice fifteen years ago. She'd been barely eighteen then, a village orphan with an unusual sensitivity to magical currents. He'd seen potential in her that others had missed, had nurtured her talent, had treated her like the daughter he'd never had.
"You came back," he whispered, and hated how vulnerable he sounded.
Then the candlelight caught the blade in her hand, and his hope died in one quick cold death.
The metal hummed with purification magic as it had been crafted with Holy Steel. The weapon was the Church's masterwork, designed specifically to kill beings like him—creatures sustained by dark magic and unholy will.
Understanding crashed over him like a tide of ice water. She hadn't come to rescue him.
She'd come to ensure his death.
"I came to end your suffering, Master." Her voice was steady and even without the slightest of cracks. "They... they promised to let me live in exchange for your head lying at their feet."
'Of course she would betray me too. But can I really blame her? After all, I only have myself to blame for walking down this dark path.'
The thought came unbidden, and he pushed it away with practiced ease. Self-doubt of his own journey was a luxury he couldn't afford. Not now, when death stood before him wearing a familiar face.
"I see." Mo Tian's voice became eerily calm. "And here I thought... well. It doesn't matter what I thought. You should know that it is the greatest sin under the Heavens for one to betray their master, as a master for a day is a father for a lifetime."
He watched her face carefully, looking for any crack in that perfect composure, any sign that some part of the girl he'd raised still existed. But Xiao Yue stood cruel and detached, her grip on the holy blade never wavering.
She held up the weapon so that its purified steel caught the light, and spoke one last time.
"May the Heavens forgive me, because your death is something they would surely desire."
Accepting her decision, He turned back to the ritual circle, making a show of ignoring her approach while his enhanced hearing tracked every step. His fingers traced the final symbols with deliberate slowness, and the array began to glow with sickly green light that seemed to drink in the surrounding shadows. The temperature in the room plummeted as necromantic energy began to flourish.
"Master, don't bother—"
"Don't bother what, dear Xiao Yue?" Mo Tian's laughter echoed off the walls, hollow and bitter. "Don't do something foolish? Don't make them all pay? Oh, but I think I will."
And as soon as his last word rung in the air was when she chose to strike.
She moved like he'd taught her to move—silent as death itself.
A gentle bone-chilling breeze brushed past him as she closed the final distance, and he immediately knew he had been struck. Even with his enhanced senses, even knowing it was coming, she'd still managed to surprise him with her speed.
The enchanted blade pierced straight through his back, sliding between his ribs to find his heart with surgical precision. The cold burn of holy steel spread through his chest like liquid ice as she gave the weapon a precise twist.
As she completed these actions, the door to the chamber burst open with a thunderous crack. Splinters of ancient wood scattered across the floor as three figures strode through the ruined threshold like avenging angels stepping down from heaven itself.
Archmagus Ji Hao led them, his silver staff crackling with barely restrained power. Behind him came Archmagus Fang Wei, representing the Royal Court in his pristine white robes that seemed to glow with inner light, and Archmagus Zhu Ming, whose golden vestments marked him as the Holy Church's champion. All three of them held the power to topple nations with their might alone, and all three had come to witness his end.
The timing was too perfect to be coincidence. They'd been waiting for Xiao Yue to strike before making their entrance.
"Surrender at once, Mo!" Archmagus Zhu shouted righteously, his voice booming with the authority of divine mandate. "Once you've died, this nation—no, this world—shall know peace!"
"And once you have died, we'll be sure to erase all traces of you and your work from this world," Ji Hao whispered underneath his breath, though Mo Tian's enhanced hearing caught every word. His former friend's lips curved into a satisfied grin. "And I will be crowned the hero who so bravely vanquished you."
Feeling empowered by the three Archmages behind her, Xiao Yue leaned against her master's robed back and whispered into his ear with false tenderness, "I'm sorry. But this was simply inevitable."
Mo Tian coughed, blood spattering the open grimoire's pages and mixing with the black ink. When it touched the ancient text, the symbols began to glow brighter with an otherworldly glow.
"Inevitable?" He smiled, even as his vision darkened at the edges and his interrupted transformation finally began to complete itself. The pain was extraordinary—every cell in his body simultaneously dying and being reborn as something else, something more. "Oh, Xiao Yue, the only truly inevitable thing... is me!"
His blood, now flowing freely onto the ritual circle, activated the ancient spell matrix with explosive force. The room filled with otherworldly screaming as reality began to tear at its seams like fabric under too much strain. Black miasma poured from the widening cracks, carrying with it the scent of distant dimensions and alien mathematics.
Xiao Yue stumbled backward, her perfect composure finally cracking as primal fear replaced trained detachment. Her face went pale as death itself.
"What have you done?" Archmagus Fang shouted over the rising cacophony, his white robes beginning to flutter in winds that came from nowhere and everywhere at once.
Mo Tian straightened despite the blade still lodged in his back, power coursing through his transforming body as the forbidden magic took hold. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of cosmic forces and unbreakable oaths, each word seeming to echo from multiple dimensions at once.
"Since I have been betrayed by the only people in this world I could call my friends," the ritual circle flared brighter with each syllable, "and defeated by my enemies, my only option is this spell."
Cracks appeared in the air itself, revealing glimpses of swirling chaos beyond. Strange sounds and noises began to echo in the room, sounding like words from beings much more than the human mind could comprehend.
"It may not be in this lifetime or the next, but I swear by my name as Mo Tian, by the blood of my veins and the hatred in my heart, you and your descendants will pay this debt with your lives!"
"Master, please stop—" Xiao Yue's voice cracked with genuine terror now.
"Mo Tian, cease this foolish attempt to cheat death!" Zhu Ming raised his own staff, holy light blazing from its tip towards him in an attempt to disrupt the growing spell matrix.
At these desperate protests, Mo Tian let out a sound that was part chuckle, part death rattle, and entirely inhuman. The lich transformation was completing itself at last, fed by the massive surge of necromantic energy from the ritual. His flesh sloughed away like old paint, revealing the pristine bone structure beneath. His eyes became points of malevolent green fire in empty sockets.
"Death?" His voice was the whisper of wind through graveyards, the final breath of dying worlds. "You think this is about cheating death? This is about transcending it entirely."
"I've grown tired of being able to play with others and decide whether or not they live or die! It is time to see whether I can escape death and change fate for myself without succumbing to it, becoming a true Grim Reaper!"
The ritual reached its crescendo as his transformed body became the perfect conduit for forces beyond mortal understanding.
"With my remaining life force as its conduit," he declared, and the words seemed to be carved into reality itself with blades of pure will, "I cast the forbidden spell of Eternal Reincarnation!"
The world itself seemed to have exploded.
Red light and screaming chaos consumed everything as the barriers between dimensions collapsed like a house of cards in a hurricane. Through the overwhelming fiery radiance, Mo Tian saw Xiao Yue's terrified face frozen in a silent scream, saw the three Archmagi desperately casting protective spells that would prove utterly inadequate, saw his tower crumbling around them like a sandcastle before the tide.
Far below, the assembled armies looked up in sudden, beautiful fear as they realized their victory had become something else entirely.
Then consciousness shattered like crystal, and Mo Tian's soul fell into an endless void, carried by currents of magic gone catastrophically wrong toward a destination none of them could have imagined. All traces of him having vanished from the Magus world entirely.